• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1383 0

too much not to make it his life's preoccupation. If things had gone differently, he might have been a very good provincial schoolmaster, content in the peace of a small town. But having been treated like a savage animal, he felt marked by exile to engage in some great struggle. His depression was a result of his years of yearning in Cayenne, the bitterness he felt due to having suffered so deeply for no reason, and the vows he had secretly made to avenge people who had been beaten and justice that had been trampled underfoot. The giant market with its mountains of food had hastened the crisis. To Florent it was a metaphor for some satiated, gluttonous beast, a bloated Paris wallowing in fat and propping up the empire. He felt surrounded by oversize bosoms and bloated faces, which continually attacked him for his thinness and his unhappy face. It was the belly of shopkeepers, the belly of ordinary people puffing themselves up, celebrating in the sunshine, declaring that everything was for the best, since passive people had never been so well fattened.

As Florent had these thoughts he clenched his fist, ready for the struggle, angrier about his years of exile than he had been since his return to France. He was overtaken by hatred. He often put down his pen and began to dream. The dying fire cast a hot light on his face, the lamp smoked, and the finch fell back asleep on one foot with his head tucked under a wing.

Sometimes, at eleven o'clock, Auguste, seeing the light under the door, knocked on his way to bed. Impatiently Florent would open the door. The charcuterie apprentice would sit down in front of the fire, barely speaking and never explaining why he had come. All the while, his eyes would remain fixed on the picture of Augustine and himself all dressed up. Florent decided that he liked to come to the room because it used to be occupied by his girlfriend. One day Florent asked him if he was right.

“Well, maybe,” answered Auguste, surprised by discovering this about himself. “I never thought of that before. I came to see you without really knowing why … Well, if I tell Augustine, she'll laugh … when you're going to get married, you don't think about such things.”

When he was feeling talkative, his singular theme was the charcuterie he was going to set up with Augustine in Plaisance. He seemed so perfectly certain that everything would work out exactly the way he planned it that Florent couldn't help but feel a certain respect for him, albeit mixed with irritation. The young man was resolved. Though every bit as stupid as he looked, he went straight for his goal and would probably attain it without problems.

Once Florent had had one of these visits from the young apprentice, he could not settle back to work again until he admitted the thought “What a dummy this Auguste is.”

Every month Florent went to Clamart to see Monsieur Verlaque. These visits were almost a pleasure for Florent. The poor man still hung on, to the amazement of Gavard, who had predicted six months at most. Every time Florent went, the sick man told him that he was feeling much better and was hoping to go back to his job. But the days slipped by, and Verlaque had serious relapses. Florent would sit by his bed, chat about the fish market, and try to cheer him up. He would place the fifty francs he paid him every month on the pedestal table, and though it was prearranged, the former inspector would invariably protest and seem not to want to take the money. Then they would change the subject and the coins would remain on the table.

When Florent left, Madame Verlaque would accompany him to the front door. She was a small, kindly woman with a tearful manner. Her only conversational subject was the expenses incurred from looking after her husband: the high price of chicken broth, red meat, Bordeaux, medicine, and the doctor. Florent was embarrassed by this sad conversation, and for the first few visits, he failed to grasp its meaning. But finally, since the poor woman was always crying and carrying on about how happy they had been when her husband had